Posts Tagged ‘Merge’

Though he’d released two indie albums in the mid-90s, Richard Buckner arrived in most listeners’ ears with his 1997 major label debut, Devotion + Doubt. His voice and delivery were unlike just about anyone who’d come before. His early music found cover under the Americana umbrella, but even then the steel, fiddle and vocal edgings that signaled country were balanced by strong elements of folk, pop, rock and jazz. His weary vocals played as hushed confessions, and his impressionistic lyrics were filled with fragments, shards really, of his recently ended marriage. For all but the few who’d latched on to him earlier, it was a breathtaking introduction.

His two albums with MCA led to another indie stint and a 2004 landing at Merge. A string of misfortunes (including a failed soundtrack opportunity, an inadvertent brush with the law and technical difficulties) led to a five-year gap between 2006’s Meadow and 2011’s Our Blood. But now, with comparative ease, he’s produced an album backed with ambient electronic textures, tape loops and layered vocals. Buckner’s trilled notes can suggest Randy Travis or George Jones, but the atmospheric backgrounds, such as on “When You Tell Me How It Is,” frame his voice similarly to Roxy Music-era Bryan Ferry.

So, beginning in late January 2014, I’ll be traveling throughout Washington, Oregon, California and Arizona with my acoustic guitar, hollering & strumming into thin air to audiences weary of the intimate setting of the rock bar-ambienced dins of out-of-time cocktail-shaker-maracas, bachelorette parties and bar-side conversations about “who’s-that-guy-onstage-again?” and “Ten-bucks-to-get-in-and-it’s-just-a-bunch-of-dudes-shushing-me-when-I-try-and-tell-you-about-my-new-hilarious-fantasy-football-team-name!”. In between the shows, I’ll also be working on my latest collection of run-on sentences (containing parenthesis so I can cram in more unnecessarily-tangented details) featuring nouns disguised as adjectives. I like using determiners as well, but my therapist thinks that it adds to my issues (with over-explaining).

For more information on hosting a Richard Buckner show, visit Undertow.

Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake and Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci’s Euros Childs have more melodicism in the tip of their respective pinkies than most musicians create in their entire careers. Paired together for their first full-length collaboration, the results are a brilliantly crafted cocktail of their respective bands, ‘60s British invasion and garage pop, canyon country, ‘70s power pop, pub and light rock, and ‘80s post-punk psychedelia. Like XTC’s Dukes of Stratosphear, there’s an element of spot-the-influence here, but the references are more fully digested and fleeting: a vocal harmony that suggests Curt Boettcher, CS&N or America, a melody hook that recalls the Kasnetz-Katz bubblegum factory, a stomping rhythm you’d have heard from Brisnley Schwarz, or an organ riff that lodges the Monkees in your ear.

There’s something exciting happening in Los Angeles; singer/songwriters like Bleu and Adam Marsland are breaking out once again, but instead of rolling down from the communal experience of the canyon, they’re holing up in homes and hobby studios. Such was the inspiration for former Broken West guitarist/vocalist Ross Flournoy, whose relocation to Pasadena after a band breakup severed his daily musical connection, and left him casting about for direction. Amid writer’s block and a daily beer habit, his lifesaver was an NPR song competition that afforded only a weekend to write, record and submit a song. The external pressure turned out to be just what he needed, documenting his denial, admission, inventory, acceptance and recovery as a songwriter in “Under the Gun.” With one under his belt, dozens more tumbled forth, some written alone, some with Adam Vine.

Invitations are still being accepted for Nashville, Louisville, Indianapolis, Champaign, Cleveland, Providence, Baltimore, D.C., and Chapel Hill/Durham. For more information, send an e-mail to musictapescaroling@gmail.com. Please note in your e-mail if you’re willing to entertain outside guests, and whether you can offer the carolers a place to sleep. This could be the most unusual house concert you ever have a chance to host!

If you’re rather attend than host, you can find the address of one of the homes in your area that will be hosting the carolers: e-mail musictapescaroling@gmail.com for the address and time of a performance near you.

The singing saw (or as it’s commonly known, the musical saw) is thought to date back to the late 1800s, though it really came into its own in the first few decades of the twentieth century. Early saw players used standard issue hand saws, but over the years specialized compounds, thinner steel and varying lengths were used to produce a saw that excelled at producing music in lieu of cutting wood. The saw is played with its handle between the player’s legs and the blade bent into an ‘S’. The sawyer bows the flat middle part of the ‘S’ to produce an ethereal vibration whose harmonics and sustain can make a single saw sound like several. For those who’ve never heard a singing saw, close relations in sound are the Theramin, an electronic instrument that’s been featured in many films (Spellbound, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Ed Wood), and the electro-theremin, most famously used on the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.”

Thirty-one years after their formation, this Dunedin, New Zealand trio is still breathing life into original compositions. Their formation spurred the creation of the legendary Flying Nun label, they drifted apart, broke up and reformed a few times to release singles and EPs throughout the 1980s, and finally waxed their first full length, Vehicle, in 1990. The group’s career continued to be marked by dissolutions, side projects and occasional reunions for albums and tours (and live albums of tours), culminating in the 2-CD overview, Anthology, in 2003. This latest reunion album brings together the classic lineup of Kilgour, Kilgour and Scott back to the studio.

The DIY punk-rock and organ-driven pop of the band’s lo-fi 4-track works have been refined over the years, with properly recorded studio sessions that include chiming guitars and keyboard drones. Many of these new productions have a psychedelic (or at least lightly drugged) feel, including the Eastern inflected guitar of “Asleep in the Tunnel” and the thick, Pink Floyd styled instrumental raga “Moonjumper.” The bulk of “Are You Really on Drugs” and “In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul” are fashioned by repeating their titles as lyrics, the former hypnotizing in the manner of a long stare at ceiling tiles, the latter suggesting time for philosophical rumination. Their music is sinewy and muscular, modern but with the spark of their punk roots.

Contact

hype at hyperbolium dot com

Disclaimers

All music files are posted with the express permission of the recording artist or record label. Files are available for at most 30 days. If any of these files infringe upon rights that you hold, please notify us at the e-mail contact below and they will be removed.

Reviewed items may have been purchased, rented, borrowed, bartered, streamed, received as gifts or supplied by artists, authors, filmmakers, publishers, manufacturers or publicists.

Hyperbolium.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com